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Premier Christy Clark is sworn in as MLA for Westside-Kelowna by Craig James, Clerk of the B.C. legislature, in Vancouver on Tuesday.

VICTORIA -- With the postelection session of the legislature already a fading memory for those who were even aware of it in the first place, the week began with the arrival of a self-congratulatory update from B.C. Liberal party headquarters.

“All of the votes have been counted and Premier Christy Clark secured 62.66% of the vote — a gain of about 4%,” it reported on Monday, the day before Clark was sworn in as newly elected MLA for Westside-Kelowna.

“The NDP pulled in 29.6%,” it continued, low-lighting the performance by the rival parties in the byelection. “The B.C. Conservatives saw their vote sawn in half, ending up with 5.9%.”

Then came the piling on: “There were sighs of relief in NDP quarters last week when the legislature rose. Canadian Press reporter Dirk Meissner wrote that NDP MLAs, who “have been walking the halls of the legislature for the past month in what appears to be a zombielike trance, admit to looking forward to fleeing Victoria to allow themselves more time to come to terms with the defeat.’ ”

All this and more courtesy of Mike McDonald, still identified as “campaign director” for the governing party. “What campaign?” one might ask, now that election 2013 and the followup byelection are over and done with.

The answer, it would appear, is that McDonald, one of Christy Clark’s oldest friends and strongest supporters, is director of her permanent election campaign.

“It’s not over, it’s just beginning,” wrote McDonald, only partly tongue-in-cheek. “With barely 1,381 days to the next election on May 9th, 2017, the work is underway. Postelection BBQs are happening throughout the province to thank volunteers and keep them involved. Many other fundraisers are being planned for the fall with the premier and various MLAs.”

Note the date. The Liberals have been urged to move the next provincial election to the fall of 2017 to separate it from the spring budget cycle. The campaign director, mindful of how the party has won four springtime elections in a row, has his eye on the second Tuesday in May.

“Why fundraise now, didn’t we just win an election?” McDonald continues, posing a question that he proceeds to answer. “We can’t rest on our laurels. It’s time to step up and replenish our riding funds, pay down the party’s modest debt from the election, and build the war chest for 2017. We are in very good shape financially but we cannot take anything for granted.”

Time for a shot at one of the rising stars on the Opposition side, the newly elected MLA for Vancouver-Fairview: “George Heyman was stretching things further than Mister Fantastic himself when he said the Fantastic Four movie sequel was fleeing Vancouver because the tax breaks were not big enough. Missing from the NDP script is what the movie producers are saying themselves: They needed summer weather, which is hard to conjure up in Vancouver here in the fall and winter, no matter how great George Heyman’s superpowers might be.”

The quotations are from the latest of a series of missives sent out by McDonald since the party’s electoral triumph, each presenting the Ladysmith-based campaign director as a combination of motivational psychologist and head cheerleader.

On the Liberal promise of a referendum for any new funding sources for TransLink: “The Mayors’ Council made it clear that it opposes a referendum for new TransLink funding ... because the public won’t support it. Now I’m just a simple country boy from Ladysmith, but if the public doesn’t support something, is that a reason not to ask for their vote? And if the public doesn’t support it, then maybe we should find a way to get the public to support it.”

On the drive for a 10-year deal in the K-12 education sector: “Another election promise has been greeted with postelection denial — the BCTF just doesn’t want to go there. (But) imagine a decade without strikes and extracurricular activities bans. My daughter went through labour action at her school in 2011-12 — it sucked for the kids, big-time.”

In one missive, he mentioned, in passing, some of the “things I do for fun these days: Googling ‘gender gap Christy Clark.’ Looking up pre-election polls and analysis. Watching old Hansard videos to hear NDP heckling B.C. Liberals about losing.”

Happily, he did not recall the observation I made back in February, after the party lost star recruit Sukh Dhaliwal as a candidate: “In light of this and other reversals, some Liberals must be wondering whether McDonald is over his head in this campaign.”

Along with the told-you-so moments, he has also provided cautionary messages to party supporters, who are the main recipients (along with members of the news media) of these updates.

“We’re not perfect either,” he wrote in his July 12 update. “We did some good things (we won) and some bad things (we didn’t win all 85 seats). And we can’t be too cocky about the win (it does feel good, though) because the voters have their pitchforks close by in case they need them.”

As has been said before, the re-election campaign begins the morning after the victory celebration. And it would appear that Clark’s hand-picked campaign director already has his eyes on the prize.

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